Ready to Bailout My Healthcare for me?
I have a medical insurance coverage issue. Here it is in a nutshell:
With all of this, you might wonder if I'm feeling a little more amenable to "universal healthcare", in any of its many proposed form. After all, I'm now down in (or at least very close to) the foxhole with the other [insert your favorite number] uninsured Americans.
Well, for anyone out there readingthis who is a fan of any of these plans, let me ask you a few simple questions:
Would you think it was OK for me to go out on the street and stick up a few passersby to pay for my medications? How about a bank? Or maybe one of those evil rich people, who got "obscene bonuses"? Or maybe I should just go to tghe pharmacy and take it! Why not? And I could always go to the doctor who did my eye surgeries, or my endocrinolgist and get them to treat me at gunpoint.
This is really the bottom line question that everyone on the march for "universal healthcare" wants to dance around:
Exactly what in my predicament - real as it is - would give me the right to take money, supplies, time or skill away from someone else at gunpoint? And, if I don't have that "right", what on earth makes it right for one, or a dozen, or a hundred, or a thousand, or a million of YOU to HIRE someone else with guns to take it from one, or a dozen, or a hundred, or a thousand, or a million of "THEM" (whoever "they" are) and give any part of it to me?
Tell me. I really want to know.
- I'm out of a job
- I've been out of a job for almost 6 moths
- Group Coverage from my last job is over
- Savings are running out
- I'm a diabetic
- The medictaions and supplies I have been using come to more than $1200 retail every month
- Individual medical coverage that gives anywhere close to the same benefit levels I once had will cost me (...wait for it...) more than $1200 every month
With all of this, you might wonder if I'm feeling a little more amenable to "universal healthcare", in any of its many proposed form. After all, I'm now down in (or at least very close to) the foxhole with the other [insert your favorite number] uninsured Americans.
Well, for anyone out there readingthis who is a fan of any of these plans, let me ask you a few simple questions:
Would you think it was OK for me to go out on the street and stick up a few passersby to pay for my medications? How about a bank? Or maybe one of those evil rich people, who got "obscene bonuses"? Or maybe I should just go to tghe pharmacy and take it! Why not? And I could always go to the doctor who did my eye surgeries, or my endocrinolgist and get them to treat me at gunpoint.
This is really the bottom line question that everyone on the march for "universal healthcare" wants to dance around:
Exactly what in my predicament - real as it is - would give me the right to take money, supplies, time or skill away from someone else at gunpoint? And, if I don't have that "right", what on earth makes it right for one, or a dozen, or a hundred, or a thousand, or a million of YOU to HIRE someone else with guns to take it from one, or a dozen, or a hundred, or a thousand, or a million of "THEM" (whoever "they" are) and give any part of it to me?
Tell me. I really want to know.
Well said, however...
While I don't want anyone forcibly taking your money or mine, neither do I want to continue sacrificing ever-increasing portions of our economy to physician-priests of the healthcare temples. And I want everyone who is rightfully here to have reasonable access to reasonable healthcare.
The $1200/month your meds cost would be only $900 if we deleted health insurance from the model. And that $900/month would be reduced again if we made them available without physician prescription.
I agree that I hate taxes, but the way I see it many of us individually & all of us collectively are spending far more than necessary for the truly abysmal healthcare we receive in the US. Let's look for ways to break the current model, even if it breaks some of our dearly held concepts of liberty & limited government.
You raise some interesting points about the influence of insurance on the price of medication. There's a little more to it than what you indicate, and there's also a little more to the story than I included in the base article.
For one thing, the presence of the health insurance in the equation masks costs, so that neither the doctor nor the patient take that into serious consideration when deciding on a course of treatment. From a purely medical standpoint and on an individual case, this *might* arguably be for the best. (I can think of some counterarguments.) But in terms of the overall SYSTEM, it i spositively deadly, driving up costs enormously, when everyone gets "the best and newest" regardless of other options.
Now, in my particular case, here's the part of the story I didn't include in the base article. In discussion with my endocrinologist, we have laid out a course of treatment that will use GENERIC insulin (in fact, non-prescription) that will cost more on the order of $150 to $200 per month. And what a lot of people don't know (and a lot of Doctors won't tell you, though mine did) is that many Doctors will accept less than their published "fee". They will indeed often accept what the insurance company would ACTUALLY have paid them for their services.
But how many people ever ask their Doctor, "Is there a less expensive medication?" (let alone, "Can we do this without a medication?") True, they will ask if they can use a "generic" because the co-pay is less. Or how many people actually bother to READ the "explanation of benefits" letter they get from their insurance company and understand that the ACTUAL price of that $7500 outpatient surgery was $1890? Nope - all that most people read is that $7500 and the $) under "Patient Responsibility".
Far from needing to abandon any of our "dearly held concepts of liberty & limited government", we need to apply them with great vigor here. We need to let a little bit of that Free Market fresh air back into the equation.
How interesting to note that 100 percent of the people who read the article like it. I certainly don't like the scenario as described, yet I'm not in favor of universal health care either. I come from socialized medicine and believe me, the good Danish citizens are now buying private health insurance because the wait time for the public often is way too long.
Well, they say "money talks". (I know, because I often hear it say "Goodbye!")
I remember many years ago, I had an outpatient surgery for a minor problem. Around the same time period, I had to take the family dog to the vet for a skin irritation that he had. A few days later, the vet called to see how the dog was doing. The Doctor never once called to see how *I* was doing.
Now, every time I tell that story, it gets a laugh. But if you think about it for a moment, you will realize: in NEITHER CASE did anyone call the PATIENT. They both did exactly the same thing - they made sure that the BILL PAYER was happy. So if Doctors and Hospitals are beholden to the Gummint for their income, guess who will be the focus of their concern... It ain't gonna be me and thee!
We already see this effect clearly with the influence of the insurance industry. It sure as <bleep> won't be any better in the hands of Gummint bureaucrats.